lint arts.
EXHIBITION OF THE WATER COLOUR SOCIETY. THE old Society's exhibition is this year very strong, stronger in some respects than it is likely for some time again to be, for not only are there the drawings of four new associates full of promise in the main, while the older members (such of them at least as are the main supports of the Society) have generally maintained, and in some cases surpassed, their usual high standard of excellence, but for the last time the strong heart and hand of William Hunt, whose recent death is hire a door shut between the past and pre- sent of this Society, lend their strength and brilliance to the walls which once he shared with Barrett, De Wint, and D. Cox. Strong to the end, his powers of execution were absolutely untouched by age, and to the last he chose subjects where those powers were indispensable. In fact he is now better known by the startling reality of his birds'-nests and mushrooms, plums and primroses, than the broader records of his impressions of men and landscape which the Society's winter exhibitions first introduced to many. Of the later kind the " Flower-girl " (275) is an admirable example. The bountiful load of flowers is a blaze of colour, and the homely girl who owns it gives an interest to the picture which not all the perfect imitation in colour, form, and texture of peach, rose, or birds'- nest can win for other drawings by the same master, dependent as they must be solely on their technical merits. But how great these are may be seen by a comparison with some other fruit and flower pieces in the gallery, not bad in themselves, but relatively lame and faltering.
The new associates bid fair to be a real accession to the Society's strength. Mr. F. Walker, by his power of expression and the excellence of his drawing, takes at once first rank. Magazine readers will be surprised to see a familiar woodcut developed into a noble work of art like the "Scene from Philip " (317), most admirable for the beauty and expressiveness of the heads and their freedom from sentimentality, for skill in composition (the inside of a churchwardens' pew has of itself little relationship with lines of beauty) and for careful workmanship. The one fault is blackness, or rather absence of colour, in the shadows—a fault which more exclusive use of the brush will probably mend ; at present it is observable in all his drawings, even in "Spring" (92), where, how- ever, the daylight is undeniable, and the merits of the drawing in other respects are as great and of the same kind as in the first-named picture. Opposite in nearly all respects is Mr. E. B. Jones. In him, instead of beauty of form we have an affectation of ungainli- ness, and for quiet and unobtrusive expression there is exaggeration and grimace. Power there is ; but distorted, and trained to fit the uncompromising grooves of a school that, with all its earnest- ness, has been tried and found wanting in some of the leading requisites of art. And it would be curious to see this Society now lending a band and giving currency to productions of this class, were it not probable that in the depth and luminous quality of Mr. Jones's colour and the intensity of his feeling they saw a foundation upon which the healthy influence of his new brethren, breeding a juster appreciation of pre-Raphaelite doctrines, might build a more harmonious and natural superstructure. But time will be needed for all this—for enforcing attention to the rules of perspective linear as well as aerial, and for encouraging a more catho- lic taste for beauty than is implied in studying every head from one model with protruded chin. Mr. Lundgren is another good recruit for the figure-painters. His" Choristers at Seville" (216), men and boys in church robes of red, white, or black re- hearsing their music, is a work of great spirit and originality, well painted and with great variety of character in the heads. And
lastly, Mr. Boyce brings to the side of the landscape painters a rare power of colour, sober and true in tone (i.e., generally, for some- times, as in (106), he has a severe fit of raw green), which, when he will be at the pains of better composition or better choice of sub- jects, will enable him to stand a comparison with most of the older members. I speak in particular of "The Mill near Goring" (32), " Godstow " (152), "The Straw Yard at Whitchurch " (299), and "A View at Cairo" (45), exhibited last year at the Cosmopolitan club-room.
But for the full and ripe fruit of thorough feeling and training in art the works of the older members must be looked at—the Burtons, the Seaga, and the Fripps. It would be easy to find a score or two of painters who know as much about ancient costume and armour as Mr. Burton, but difficult to name five who could so completely make the clothes secondary to the wearers, or breathe into these the life and action which this accbmplished artist seldom fails to do. " Hellelil and Hildebrand" (82) is suggested (says the catalogue) by an old Norse ballad: the ballad is omitted, but the picture tells its own story. The lady as she mounts the turret stairs meets the knight descending, who, armed and setting forth on some warlike expedition, seizes the moment (yet fearfully, and when he has well nigh let it slip) to press her arm to his lips and breast, and thus make silent confession of his love. The figure of the lady, half averted but not resentful, is full of grace, and the knight is noble and devoted. The general effect of the picture is rich, simple, and massive, and it may appear hypercritical to find fault with the knight's left leg. There is, however, an awkwardness in it which for the sake of the picture as a whole one may excuse, but which one cannot help wishing amended. "L. Ecuyer" (297), by the same artist, is a, noble head of a youth bearing his master's helmet, and "The Child Miranda" (339) a beautiful half entranced girl who has been communing with the soul of music that slumbers in a shell. Mr. Haag has never scope for all or half his strength in landscape. It is in the human figure particularly that he excels, and next to men, camels ; "In the Desert" (83) has plenty of both, and is a most harmonious and beautiful picture. No better representation of the natural dignity of unsophisticated man was ever painted than the figure that leads the headmost camel in the caravan. Mr. Haag's Arabs always make one doubt whether they are not after all, the chief of true gentlemen. See, again, the natural grace of the man sitting on his camel's back in "A Welcome" (146), all his gesture expressing with native courtesy gratitude for the offering of water that is handed to him by the woman on foot. That these pictures are good in colour, and that the drawing of the figures. is lifelike, is only what all expect of the artist. In his " Bab-el-Kataneen " (100) is some admirable painting of reflected light and colour in the shadows, which may be compared instructively with Mr. F. Walker's defective rendering of similar effects. It is sometimes objected to Mr. A. Fripp's peasant children that they have not the true rustic blood in their veins ; that they are more gentle than simple, and savour (in all but their clothes) more of the drawing-room than of the soil. But this is a mistake, and argues but slight acquaintance with the agricul- tural districts of England, where the beauty of the young children is often as great and as refined as among their wealthier neigh- bours, and it is only as they get well up in their teens that their lower education and harder life make them the lubberly lads and lasses often seen at fieldwork. It may be that Mr. Fripp chooses the best looking of them for his models ; but from his point of treating them, i.e., the serious and not the burlesque, this is quite right, and I have no sympathy with those who prefer ,ugliness as the easiest means of keeping clear of sentimentality. Even so the object is often not attained, as it has been by Mr. Fripp in his "Piping Shepherd-boy" (72), who (though not ugly) is a thorough Dorsetshire rustic, naturally occupied, and fitted with a dog of unquestionable individuality, and a characteristic background of chalk down broken into cliff by the rolling ocean. The picture is exceedingly well painted, with the utmost care in imitating natural form, texture, and colour. Mr. J. Gilbert's art is of quite a dif: ferent class. Utterly careless, as heretofore, of accuracy in imita- tion, bad in drawing, and without modesty or restraint in expres- sion, he yet carries the spectator away by his vehemence, and compels admiration for the life, action, and movement of "The Battle of the Boyne " (20), and for the dramatic power and rich colour of some part, especially the left-hand side, of "The Mer- chant of Venice" (130).
Little room is left to discuss the landscapes. Mr. G. Fripp is here facile princeps ; in grasp of an idea and in breadth of treat- ment he is unrivalled : and to these he adds firm drawing and luminous but unforced colour. True, there are besides him and besides Mr. Boyce keen and diligent students of nature,—none keener or more diligent than Mr. A. Hunt. But beautiful in detail as are the studies of this artist, tender and generally true in colour and effect of light (look at his " Ulleswater, Mid-day" (26), and " Lucerne " (127), they fail to impress you strong!) like the great hills standing apart in the evening sun, with onl■ the clouds for companions, in Mr. G. Fripp's " Nant Fraugon' (88) ; or like the silver Thames, with his elms, and willows, and free stretches of spacious meadow, in 134 and 229. An artist should be something more than a copying-machine, and Mr. G. Fripp's method deserves particular commendation for its reso- lute suppression of immaterial facts and details :—suppression, not excision,—so that the spectator feels the presence of each variety of rock and heather, grass and " screes," but is not by unrestrained expression of them distracted from the main idea and design of the picture. Mr. Dodgson being but indifferently represented, and Mr. Duncan but the shadow of his former self, Mr. Whittaker stands next in merit for his wide moorland scenes, broadly treated and very true in colour. Of these his "View from Galt-y-voer (313) "Lyn Bodd" (322), and "Moorland Scene" (38), may be selected a the best specimens. Mr. Davidson is painstaking, but wanting in breadth ; on the other hand, Mr. D. Cox, jun., though rough am even splotchy in execution, shows something of the poet in his "Mouth of the Conway" (35) and "Warwick Castle" (181). Mr. Palmer is never without a good share of this rare quality ; but his scale of colour is too artificial ; and as he is, of course, un- able to invent anything like the variety of nature, his pictures haw too much sameness. Mr. Jenkins has a fresh and breezy bit "On the Thames, near Sonning " (346) ; and among some half-dozen contributions by Mr. F. Tayler there is one spirited sketch ot "Brood Mares in the New Forest" (173) well worth stooping to
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